Category list

Getting Listed

Understanding PageRank doesn't get you very far if you are not indexed in the first place.

5.1. Search Engines

If your page (or site) has inbound links from sites in a search index, then Google (or any other broad search engine) will most likely find you pretty quickly. However, it's peculiar but true: different search engines index different portions of the Web. Also, at any given time, it is impossible for any search engine index to include the entire Web!

To avoid being left out, it makes sense to manually add your URLs to search engines. (In early times there might be more of a delay before your sites were found, and it really made sense to make sure you were listed!)

To manually add your URL to Google, go to http://www.google.com/addurl/. You can get listed at Yahoo! at http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request.

Tip: Be careful to create pages that are friendly to webbotswhich constitute the advance scouts for search enginesas I explain later in this article in "Working with the Bot."

Getting listed is, of course, only the beginning of the battle. One of the key goals of core SEO is to get both highly ranked and listed in reference to some specific search terms. Achieving this goal requires taking affirmative control of the information that the search index may use to make ranking decisionsand that it will use to understand the quality of your pages.

Submission Tools

You may also want to use an automated site submission tool that submits your site to multiple search engines in one fell swoop.

It's quite likely that your web host provides a utility with this functionality that you can use to submit the URLs for your hosted domains to a group of search engines. It's in your web host's interests to help you generate traffic, and most are pleased to provide this service.

Before using a site submission tool, you should prepare a short list of keywords and a one or two sentence summary of your site. Alternatively, you can use the keywords and description used as meta information for your site for search engine submissions.

If you Google a phrase like "Search Engine Submit," you'll find many free services that submit to a group of search sites for you. Typically, these free submission sites try to up-sell or cross-sell you on a product or service, but since you don't have to buy anything, why not take advantage of the free service? The two best-known examples of this kind of site are Submit Express, http://www.submitexpress.com, which will submit your URL to 40 sites for free (just be sure you pass on the various offers you'll find on the site) and NetMechanic, http://www.netmechanic.com, which is another search engine submission site along the same lines.

5.2. Taxonomies

Taxonomies are categorized directories of information. A directory differs from the index used by a search engine because a directory uses a structured way to categorize sites. An often-used analogy is that a directory is like the table of contents in a book, while the search engine index is like the, well, index to the book. In other words, the directory tells you how the book is organized, while the index allows you to search within the book for specific keywords.

It's a not-so-well-kept secret that one of the best approaches for getting good placements in the search engine listings is to enter through a back door, by working with the two most important structured directories: the Open Directory Project (ODP) and the Yahoo! Directory.